And Wait Without Thought
by schweinsty
Summary: Sherlock pulls the trigger, and everything goes crazy. Post The Great Game. Title from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets.


A.N. Wrote this a while back and put it on my lj, but I thought I should post it over here sometime before the next season airs :P.

And Wait Without Thought

At sixteen minutes past midnight, Sherlock Holmes points his gun at a vest studded with explosives and shoots.

He has excellent aim.

Just as he'd expected, the vest explodes, taking a good chunk of the building with it; as expected, there's only a millisecond between the moment the shot rings out and the moment he's knocked backwards off his feet from the force of the blast; and, as expected, in that millisecond, John lunges to his feet and knocks the both of them into the swimming pool.

Sherlock's thoughts as he plunges into the water are a whirlwind.

-Probably die anyway; the force of a blast large enough to take out six floors of flats isn't going to be stopped by a swimming pool, and even if we do manage to survive the initial explosion, the –

-oh, should have posted Mummy's Christmas card early-

-floor above us will probably collapse along with the pool, and we'll be trapped under several tons of rubble and be crushed to death, and even if we survive _that_, we'll suffocate or-

-wish Mycroft hadn't been so stubborn about apologizing; I'd have forgiven him if he'd have only acknowledged his fault in the-

-if we're really lucky, live long enough to dehydrate, provided the water doesn't drown us first. No chance, really; likelihood of surviving is not impossible, but highly improbable; likelihood of surviving in a not-vegetative state even more so – dear oh dear, would that count as a bang or a whimper? That's the sort of thing John would know-

-and it's a shame about his sister; should have told him earlier she's trying to get sober; unlikely she'll manage the first time around, but people have managed to surprise me before, and she's a Watson, after all, and-

It was somewhat surprising, he would think later, that his thoughts were of John and Mycroft and not a sudden revelation of _Ah, so that's how he did it!_, as Sherlock had always expected to die rather more ingloriously on the trail of a case.

John's thoughts, while no less earnest, were considerably simpler, consisting solely of: _Please, God, let us live_, which was also somewhat surprising, as John had always expected to die alone.

Then the building started to collapse around them, and they neither of them thought much of anything for a while, not Sherlock when his shoulder hit a chunk of concrete and dislocated just before he blacked out, not John when he landed on the cold, wet broken floor and a broken metal beam landed on top of him, not when the building stopped shaking and groaning and subsided into a semi-quiet stillness of steadily dripping water and soft sirens in the distance, not when the first car screeched to a stop outside and Lestrade came clambering up the rubble, torch bobbing up and down and around until the beam of light came to a rest on a blood-pale hand, several floors below, attached to an arm covered in brown bloody wool, attached to a body hidden in the shadows.

"I'm alive," was the first thing Sherlock said when he came to in the hospital, which was not surprising at all. "How extraordinary."

He raised his head with difficulty (and quite a bit of pain) and turned to look at Lestrade, who he already knew would be there from the faint scent of cheap shampoo and cigarettes (and Lestrade's husband wouldn't be pleased about that last bit, but it hurt Sherlock's head to think too much).

"Where's John?"

Lestrade looked up from his paperwork, took Sherlock in with bloodshot eyes, and jerked his head to Sherlock's right.

Sherlock raised his head further with even more difficulty and took in a pale, sickly-looking John lying unconscious on a nearby bed, and he thought 'How extraordinary,' again, and Sherlock settled his head back on the fluffed-up pillows and felt something settle in the pit of his stomach that he hadn't even known was there.

"He asked about you too," was all Lestrade said, and he rubbed his hand across a chin with several days' worth of stubble still on it, which meant something that John would surely find touching, but Sherlock would be damned if he could figure it out, he was that tired.

"Good," Sherlock said when he opened his mouth, which wasn't quite what he'd meant to say, but worked well enough that he let it be and searched out the button for the morphine pump with his fingers.

The monitors from John's side of the room sounded oddly reassuring, Sherlock thought as he let his eyes drift shut, and then he pressed the button for the morphine and thought of nothing much at all.


End file.
